Started in 2011 as a therapy for my Dysthymia, this blog has taken so many twists and turns along the way! Current project is Perry Miniatures Desert Rats & Afrika Korps along with the Travel Battle set.

Friday, 1 January 2016

Vertically challenged ....... improvements to terrain.

I wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year for 2016. We had a quiet one as my wife is working today, so I have been up and out with the dogs early and plan to play through a full Bolt Action scenario later. It's been interesting to discover that daughter Jess' partner Blake is a former 40k player who has 'moved on' to Xbox gaming, and has offered to give me a game of BA! He's a player of 'World of Tanks' too, which is an incredibly popular online game and recreates tank battles very convincingly I think. Anyway, I have a few finishing touches to complete before I will indeed challenge him to a BA game, ( and given that we don't charge them any rent to live here he had better let me win!).

One thing that is irritating me is the height of the hedge sections, currently 30mm I intend to add an extra layer of foliage to bring it up to around 50mm to make it more suitable for 28mm figures and AFV's. I'm also going to replace many of the trees with taller ones and attempt to break up the bare table more with terrain features such as fences and more cover, Given that BA is a true line of sight game and players get down to the table edge to gain the individual soldiers eye view, I'm also thinking that a higher than normal table height might improve the experience and also save a bit of bending down! To this end I'm going to raise my boards by another 8" or so, which will bring it to roughly 'upper tummy' height, which I think is probably higher than the norm? I or also plan to frame the board to avoid knocking figures off as I have done.

I recently discovered the 'Tank War' supplement for Bolt Action on ebay, had not realised that there was such a book, but promptly grabbed a copy and hopefully it will arrive next week along with a lot of other BA bits I have coming. It offers the possibility of playing larger scale tank based actions, similar to those of Flames of War, so it's something I will be developing.

With the final decision made to thin down my 15mm Flames of War to the basic 'Open Fire' set plus a few additional tanks, I'll be selling off some via eBay eventually, and offering some here as giveaways.

Selling: set of 4 'objective markers, crashed typhoon, burnt out sherman, ammo dump and German lorry held up by paras!

There may be more, but I'll start with this lot. If anybody is interested in anything on offer, either free or to buy please drop me an email ( lgramson@yahoo.com), and I'll work out who get's what. Feel free to make an offer on anything listed.

All of the stuff is painted and any proceeds of the sale bits will be ploughed back into more 28mm tanks and artillery. I'll grab some photos of the lots later today so you see whats what. To make it a little more interesting I'll set just this one simple challenge, first to post the reply gets first crack at the free list, picking one item only :)

Question: In my last beer related post I added a caption to one picture. What TV series is it quoted from and what was the name of the character who spoke the words?

And on that note I'll leave you with a few shots of the BA game after turn 1 of a 6 turn 'Envelopment' scenario, with the US forces defending and the Germans attacking. The Germans need to score victory points by pushing into the American defensive zone, destroying squads and exiting the US side of the table. Didn't bother with hidden deployment in a solo game. Pleased to report that an early (turn 1) long range AP shot from the Sherman in the woods went bouncing off the StuG's front armour as I would expect it to. Turn 2 will see lots of firing, and I must remember that US infantry do NOT suffer the modifier for moving and firing as Germans and others do, being well trained in 'fire and manouevre' skills.

As with Flames of War the Bolt Action scenarios can be played with any set up, they don't specify terrain so you can play them many times over different set ups.

Buildings still unpainted but I have plans to paint them soon. Table will be edged and possibly re textured in due course.

US infantry take cover, this typical squad includes riflemen (1 shot per turn, range 24" modifier of 1 to hit when firing over half range), one guy with a Browning Automatic Rifle (30" range with 2 shots per turn), and an NCO with sub machine gun, range 12", 2 shots). The command team are behind them complete with handy medic who can save casualties.

Overview, table is still way too bare for Bolt Action!

Grenadiers including an MG42 team move up behind the StuG. This is the MG42 'Hitlers Buzzsaw' being used in LMG mode as part of an infantry squad, it has a range of 30" in this mode (36" when used on a tripod as part of a fixed team when it becomes rated as a medium machine gun), and 3 shots per turn (4 on tripod). Requires a 'loader' as seen.

Going back to the English Civil War

This is the title of my other blog dedicated to painting armies of the ECW using Hinchiffe 25mm castings. I'm attempting to recreate the figures I owned over 30 years ago, the old range has been given a new lease of life by Ian Hinds of Hinds Figures Ltd and the figures are crisp and sharp just as I remember them.